- Hey guys. So today I have a very
different video for you. I have no script, not gonna do any fancy editing. It's just gonna be me sitting here, and telling you guys about my struggles. (scoffs) I get a lot of requests to tell like my weight loss journey story, and that kinda thing, but I don't really feel
like I can tell you guys that story until I tell
you what comes before it. And it'll give you a little insight into why I might want to
make a channel like this, or research, you know, food addiction, and junk food science and
all that kinda stuff as well. Okay. So I was always fat. Maybe I wasn't a fat
baby, but I was a fat kid, a fat teen, a fat adult. I actually only lost the
weight a couple of years ago, if that, so yeah. I've spent literally 99% of my life fat. And keep in mind. I
also have like 20 to 30 more pounds to lose, maybe more like 30 judging by my body in a bathing suit the other day. (laughing) But I'm at a healthy BMI, and
I've overcome a lot of shit. And obviously all of this, you know, weight trouble starts with food. All throughout my life I can
remember all these situations where I was just like obsessed with food, and where I was eating a lot. My mom always cooked
really healthy growing up. She always tried to
make us balanced meals. She bought whole wheat bread, she didn't buy the sugary cereals. But it really didn't matter because I was always chubby regardless. I can remember getting
up early to go and eat, to go and watch cartoons, but mainly to eat like
multiple bowls of cereal loaded with sugar in front of the TV. I can remember this
one summer where my dad gave my brother and I $20
almost every day to buy lunch, and we would go to the convenience store, and we would buy meatball subs with cheese every single day, foot-long obviously. (laughing) But not only that we would
spend every last dime, okay? 'Cause there was penny
candies and that kinda stuff. We would spent every last
dime of that money on candy, and ice cream, and
everything that we could get with that money. And things kinda just kept
moving along that path for me in my life, I was not
really an emotional eater ever, but I was definitely a boredom
eater, and a secret eater. I think as early as middle school, I was binge eating right
when I got home from school. But it really, really started
to get bad in high school. As I started to get a bit
anxious about my body, and about my intense eating patterns, and how much different
they were than my friends. I started to get really secretive with it. I didn't like eating in front of people. I kinda thought whatever I was eating, if I was eating a salad
people are gonna be like, "You don't eat salads." (laughing) Or, you know, if I was
eating really unhealthy people would be like, "Well, that's why you're fat." So I just didn't like
eating in front of people. So I would eat as little
as I could during the day, and then get home and binge
on huge quantities of foods. Not even necessarily unhealthy food. Unhealthy food is obviously my preference, but I would just eat whatever
I could get my hands on, and a lot of it. Until I was uncomfortably full, just like classic binge eating, I was uncomfortably full, I was ashamed. (laughing) And I would just take myself
to my bedroom full and unhappy. Obviously my parents
were getting concerned throughout this time of like
middle school and high school. And they would find my closets stuffed with wrappers or like my backpack. Like I just had this
crazy obsession with it. And I would always try and get candy and all that kinda stuff. I would just spend a lot of
time thinking about food, trying to get food, just pff. If I was ever with my friends, I'd always want there to
be an element of food, at the movie theaters I'd go off. I'd always get way more
food than my friends. (laughing) It really was an obsession for me. And the secretive element definitely got more and more intense, which almost like added to the high of it. I definitely got a literal high of it. And actually that high element
has only recently gone away. In I would say like, pff, the last six to eight months, maybe year. Yeah, I don't have a script, so if this is all over
the place I apologize. But I can't have it both ways, okay? So I'm trying. (laughing) (sighs) And I'm so nervous, so anyway, what the fuck was I trying to say? As I got into university
and I was living on campus, I had a meal card, I had a job, and there was lots of opportunities for me to binge in secret. So things just kept getting
more and more and more intense. And around this time is when I hit my highest weight of
255 for the first time. At least that's the
highest weight I know of, I could've been higher because
I was only weighing myself when I came home to visit my parents. So it could've been much higher than that, but that's the highest
weight I have recorded. But anyway, at the same time I had a really shitty boyfriend. And this is significant
because we had a really twisted relationship
and a big part of that was that he really hated that I was fat, while at the same time, really
encouraging me to binge, not encouraging me to binge,
but we would binge together. He was one of those guys
who was like naturally fit, or naturally athletic. He wasn't super thin,
and he kind of had abs, but not in like a really
skinny way I guess.. He just was naturally fit. And a little bit muscular. And he also had this weird thing where he didn't experience
hunger he claimed. Whatever. (laughing) I can't relate. (laughing) But anyway, he also had a really twisted relationship with food himself. He, even though he didn't really work out, he was really concerned about his body, and the way that it looked,
and that kind of stuff. And we would have these
crazy binge days together, like bigger than I had ever done before. We would go and we would get pizza, and we would go out to
sushi, which is like, obviously that's a crazy amount of food. You get ice cream at
sushi, that kinda thing. Then we would go out
and get more ice cream, we would get more candy, more chips. Literally I would stuff myself until I was like about to pop. Those were always kind
of followed up with, or they started with the promise that the next day would be a
no eating day as we called it. Basically my promise
to him was that, okay, we're gonna have this last cheat day, It's gonna be a final cheat day, and then tomorrow I'm gonna eat nothing to make up for it. And a lot of the time I
would crack, obviously. (laughing) Sometimes I would make it the whole day and then I would crack, other times I would
literally wake up and crack, and then my binging would just continue, and continue, continue, continue. And the worse I felt about myself, the more inclined I was to binge. And this relationship went
on for a bunch of years, with a bunch of that. And I just felt worse and
worse and worse about myself. And obviously I'm not
blaming him for my binging. I'm just saying that at
this time in my life, it certainly made things a
little bit more difficult. But anyways, even after we broke up, my binges still continued, and they were still pretty outta control. I would never go to sushi,
and get pizza on the same day, but that's mainly 'cause I
wouldn't wanna do that alone. (laughing) Not for any other reason. And around this time in my life, I just felt like so
outta control with food, I felt like it was never gonna change. I remember being terrified that I was gonna just
continue to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. And I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how to deal with this. And that really just kind
of made my binging worse, because it would feel futile to change. And because I had so much
self-loathing that it was like, I'd get locked into that cycle of binging like crazy one day, and then feeling like
the next day I needed to not eat at all to make up for it. And obviously if you watch
my binge-eating video, or you struggle with binge
eating, or you've overcome it, you know that those two, the binging and the restricting,
they go side by side. And if you are literally trying not to eat and you are a binge eater, then it's just, it's not gonna work at all. (laughing) Anyway, these were dark days. I didn't know how I was
gonna pull myself outta this. I didn't know if it was even possible for me to lose weight. And anyway, I'm telling you all this, because obviously now I'm
not that person anymore, and I don't feel like that. And I truly believe that
going through all that stuff and being where I was with
food, being obsessed with food, the way I was, if I can lose weight, anybody can lose weight. I truly believe that. If I can lose weight,
anyone can lose weight. If you had've asked me back then if I would ever want to
eat healthy every day, I would have said, no. (laughing) I would've said no fuckin' way, okay. I did not wanna eat healthy. (laughing) I just wanna eat like that all the time, and I didn't even, I thought it was unfair that other people could
eat whatever they want and not get fat like me. I didn't really understand
why I was saddled with such a problem when other people didn't have to deal with it the way I did. I had a really shitty
attitude in that respect. And now obviously I wanna
eat healthy every day, I still like unhealthy food, let's be clear that
stuff doesn't just die, but I do want to eat healthy every day. So I'll tell you a little
bit about where I'm at now. I have about 20 to 30 pounds
to go, as I mentioned, I actually haven't been dieting or trying to lose weight
in quite some time though. Last year, the restrictive
element of my eating disorder, I don't like to call
it that, but whatever, it is what it is, got outta control. As you kinda lose weight, and
as you do anything really, and you get momentum, you can do things that you didn't think
were possible before, or that you were unable to do before. And for me, I was gaining
some serious control over my eating for the
first time in my life. And again, this was
before I even really cared about being healthy. So I was at a point where I would just eat as little as possible
every single day. And it only went on for a few months, but it was enough that my
hair started falling out. And that was a very harsh lesson to learn. (laughing) But I'm thankful for it because it really jolted me
into having an interest, and learning about eating healthy, and not dieting in such a problematic way. Now I didn't do that my
entire weight loss journey, but I certainly had this kind
of restrictive mentality. I didn't care about health. And that's obviously only a
recent thing that has changed. I've just been kind of maintaining. I was gearing up to get back into it, and then my gym shut
down, and I was just like, I'm not gonna do it right now. So yes, where I'm at now. I still struggle with
the restrictive side. I get this little like voice in my head that basically says, say
I forget to eat breakfast, maybe noon will roll around, I look at the time and I'm
like, oh man, you know, like I could make it until dinner. You know, like a little voice, just like you can just not eat today. And I still give into
that voice sometimes. But number one, I don't want to. And number two, it is not effective. (laughing) Any day that I do that I'll end up overeating at night. Any day that I do that. And I don't want to have this mentality, but it's something that I'm working on. As far as the binging goes, the daily binging is
something that I conquered a really long time ago. But I thought I would still
kind of want to keep binging in the form of cheat days. And it's only recently that I've decided that that is not a behavior
that I wanna keep in my life. A cheat day, where I'm
still eating to the point that I'm like literally feeling
sick at the end of the day. It took me so long to realize this, even though it's so similar, if not the exact same
thing, for me anyway, I know it's not for
everyone, but for me it was. Took me a long time, get to the place where I was like, okay, yeah, no, I don't wanna do that anymore. I just wanna be more balanced
when it comes to food. And if I wanna have a treat
a couple of times a week, then I will, you know? But it's still not the
easiest thing for me in the world to have
just an ice cream cone and leave it at that. It's like, if I have an ice cream cone, then I'll think to myself you
should get something else. Like you should get chips,
or you should get this, or you should get whatever. And I've been being really
good with conquering that over the last few months. Especially having this YouTube channel. But prior to that, that's
something I really struggled with. I was unable to just have one cookie, and walk away kinda thing. Still not the best, but I
have come a long long long way when it comes to that. So yeah, I've really
just been kind of working on my relationship with food
over the last couple months. I just, I wanna slay this dragon. I don't wanna have this problem. I just want it to be gone. And honestly, the improvements
that I've made recently, I'm pretty confident that in year or two, I'm not gonna have any issues with food. During this quarantine I've been eating in a very relaxed way, and I've surprised myself
and not gained any weight, although I've lost muscle,
so I don't look as good. But I think after a long period of time of getting yourself to eat healthy, of resetting your hormones, it is totally possible to
come out on the other side from a food addiction,
or a food obsession, and eat intuitively or
whatever you wanna call it. I'm not 100% there yet. I'm still at the stage where, you know, I'm not gonna buy a bunch of junk food and put it in my cupboard, or have a candy bowl,
because that is just fuckin', that just spells disaster for me. (laughing) And I don't know if I'll
ever be at that level, or if I would want to do that, but I have made leaps and bounds when it comes to this kinda stuff. And as I've said, if I can
do it, anyone can do it. And I'm hoping that by showing you guys this research, and showing
you guys this kinda stuff, people will learn little tips and tricks that help them to have the little mini epiphanies that I had that allowed me to kind of move forward. And hopefully in a smoother and faster way than it was for me,
'cause it was not smooth, which I will tell you guys about in my weight loss journey video. Yeah, these days I eat pretty healthy. I wanna healthy all the time. Something that I'm working on, I'm still at a place where like, if you gave me a food that was good, but I didn't necessarily like it. For example, I was visiting my parents the other day and my
mom made these ice cream sandwiches things with
peanut butter cookies, and chocolate ice cream in the middle. And honestly, I didn't really
care for them that much. The peanut butter cookies
were hard, no shade to my mom, she didn't make them, so mom, if you're watching this no shade to you, you didn't make them, so yeah. But I still ate the entire thing because it's ice cream so I ate it. That kinda thing I'd like
to just get rid of it. I would like to eat foods that I want, because I feel that I truly want them, not because I'm responding
to the environment in a way that I used to respond to it. I have a lot of work to do, but I'm a lot further than I used to be. But yeah, I just wanted to tell you guys all about my struggles
so that you know where I'm coming from making
this YouTube channel, researching this stuff to begin with. I'm not trying to be mean to someone when I make a video about them. The only reason I can
even make these videos, 'cause I recognize, I mean,
I've done the research, but because I can recognize so many of those principles in myself, especially the Foodie Beauty one, that was a huge moment for
me in terms of realizations. And a lot of the comments have indicated that it was a moment for you guys too. So I'm so, so, so thankful for that. I feel like my younger
fat self would just be so, and my current self
obviously, but in particular, my younger self would just feel, be so delighted and happy to know that all of it was for something, you know? It takes that situation and makes meaning out of it and gives that really hard time in my life, meaning. And I honestly, I can't thank
you guys enough for that. I'm not trying to get like
emotional or whatever, but it's an emotional thing. I'm so happy that you guys, that I'm able to share some of this information with you guys. So it seems like a good
time to end the video. (laughing) Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. Oh my God, I'm getting emotional, it's so embarrassing. Thank you guys so much for
watching this rambly video. I hope it's not too all over the pla-- I don't ever get to talk
to you guys normally, because there's not really
a good time in my videos, but thank you guys so much
for all your comments, and that kinda thing. I am having so much fun being on here. I fucking-- (clears throat) I cannot believe that we're
at like almost 50,000 people. It honestly blows my frickin' mind. I did not expect such a crazy response in just such a short period of time. So, this has been so
fun and I'm loving it. And I'm so happy that you
guys are getting some value out of the content. That being said, leave
me comment down below, and let me know maybe a little
bit about your situation, if you can relate, and also let me know what kind of stuff you'd like to see in the future. Thank you guys so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one.
